Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 19 May 1980 The meeting was called to order at 19:31 by Richard Soley. In attendance were Soley, GMP, HGA, WER, Jay, RK, Don, KHS, RDM (asleep). Late were: ACW, RLL, Alan, c|, WMY, JSL, and J9. The minutes of the previous meeting were read and accepted. ACW, RLL, Alan and c| came in during the minutes. Treasurer's Report: So far this month we have spent $10755.99. The treasurer got a note from FinBoard to the effect that we were getting $1200 next year. This news came from some UA hacker who claims, among other silly things, that we owe the Institute $4000. Chairman's Report: The chairman has grown two feet. Office Report: It has been rumored that the safety office turned around and approved the VLSI move to Building 39. The idea seems to be that the second floor will be exiled to Building 10 and that the rest of the Center facilities will be scattered to the four winds. The letter to Paul Gray is thus in active preparation again. Penny said "KTOC" again. The real chairman came in at this point, and took over the meeting in a sudden coup. Barry Margolin donated his copy of the Macsyma manual to the office, which was in sore need of such. The refrigerator makes grinding noises, and so does RK. The weekly now comes on 8.5x11 paper. RK fixed the daily. The new spinwriter paper is of very poor quality. We should go back to the other manufacturer, Duplex. J9 came in at this point. The spinwriter repairman says that the platen rollers should not be in contact with the platen when the tractor-feed is in use. Computer Services: There is hardly any Computer Services report. If people ask how expensive Shift 1 is, the approved answer is that it is $10-12 per hour for normal work, and $30-40 per hour for Emacs. The Student project is getting critically large. It is very hard to make MSF-sized PDT's work. There are 800 users, and the absolute maximum is 1019. Next year we will really be in trouble. There are really two separate problems: the PDT may become too big for a segment; and even before then, compilation of PMFs becomes very slow. The second problem can be addressed by writing incremental PMF-compiling hacks. The PDT will blow out long before the Student project directory does, so issues of mail routing, etc. will not come up for a while. 370 users will soon be able to do some of their own administration, like changing their passwords and their disk allocation. Now they will be able to screw themselves more thoroughly and spend more of our money without our knowing it, all at the same time. Only IBM could do it so well. Telecommunications Report: Three hours were spent fixing equipment in the Student Center, at the end of which everything worked except the LA36, which was fixed a few days later. The ADM3A did not arrive. The Burton LA36 was reported frotzed but no action was taken. This is a little marginal. In general people have been lazy and reluctant to look for things to do for the office. The Student Center LA36 had its two-amp slo-blo replaced by a circuit breaker which seems to trip out much too often, or at least did before it was fixed. We received our Spinwriter ribbons late because they were shipped late. In the interim we borrowed some from the Math Department and from Building 38. We nearly failed our users in a serious way but came through by the skin of our collective teeth. We should be more careful to keep up an adequate supply. Publications Report: We are nearly out of Emacs handouts, which are not very well written. Perhaps they should be rewritten. Volunteers for this are solicited. We should keep a record of what manuals we buy on the SIPB_admin account. KHS reorganized and updated the documentation in the Student Center. The office has Honeywell's neato-keen spiffy Wordpro manual, published by marketing, and very slick indeed. R/O Report: RLL will order phones for the Midway. Annual Report Report: () Other: We remember that Course 15 is still offering subjects that are so mired in obsolete technology that their students are forced to go to ridiculous lengths in order to win. Once upon a time we planned to talk to the administrators of the Course 15 computer courses and see if we could enlighten them. Maybe one day we will do this. We should remember to nominate Don Abrams in the fall, but he won't be here in the summer. Two more people left CISL. Gary Palter will leave the Center and go to work for CISL. Mr. Palter rumored that Multics has high priority in the Honeywell DPS-8 project, and that DEC is abandoning the VT-132 in favor of a chimerical VT-200. JSL came in during "Other". Elections: Jeannine Mosely was nominated last week for membership in the SIPB. She was elected 12 in favor, 1 against, 0 abstention. Applications: Mary Beth Klee, $100 to meeting by DCP/RK, to do a 20 page paper on cold war historiography for a course at Brandeis. She is a PhD candidate there. Her connection to MIT is that she is the wife of a student. Given. Minh Hoang was (incorrectly) Warned for having a Star Trek program on Multics and getting a dprint of it. It turned out that the program was not even in Multics Basic, but rather was intended to run on a micro. He simply uploaded it in order to dprint it, and hence did nothing wrong. Robert W. Baldwin wants to learn FORTRAN so that he can get a job in Zurich. Because of the requirements of the job he has to learn batch, so he wants $100 on the 370. Peter G. Balbus seems to have been doing pre-thesis work on his Student account. Apparently did nothing really wrong. Jane Martini has had $150 Coop for doing her thesis on bubbles. Lawrence Alfred Powell wants to use CMS to do some statistics in SPSS. He wants $200. His application is inspired and people are encouraged to read it. Given. Barry Margolin wants $100 to write Emacs extensions. Given. Barry Star was Warned for doing his thesis with his Student account. We found out a day before it was due and decided not to screw him, but no notation was made on his form. A warning form should have been generated then. Tom Hayes wants money (no amount specified) to work on some fiction he has been writing, so that he can send them out for publication. His only affiliation with MIT is that he is a Lowell Institute instructor. Another problem is that it may violate the "personal gain" clause of our policy. He was called on the phone and said that he did indeed hope to make some money from it. Rejected. Aaron Severs was given $100 by EC vote for finishing papers. Elmar Noeth was given $100 by EC vote for finishing papers. Total allocation: $1760 excluding Coop. Total autoed: $1060 Student: $1060 ECS: $0 EC vote: $200 Student: $200 ECS: $0 370: $0 By meeting: $500 Student: $200 ECS: $0 370: $300 Coop: $150 Total 370 allocation: $300 Other Other: Hungarian Cubes are coming out of the walls. Jeff Schiller was honored by the Electrical Engineering Department. Barry and Ken will be gone for the summer. Penny has moved to North Cambridge. Bill, Shawn, Rob, and Dorothy are going to sublet a beautiful house in Milton for the summer. Software Arts has a COMSAT running absentee on Multics which hacks mail to and from their Prime. "Where the Buffalo Roam" is bad craziness. Gary has seen a Krugerrand. We do not know if it saw him. Gary is very weird. An expedition to see "The Empire Bites Bags" is planned for Rursday. The meeting was adjourned at 2210. Minutes taken and submitted by Allan C. Wechsler. ;; Local Modes: ;; Mode:TEXT ;; LISP ) Hack:1 ;; Auto Fill Mode: ;; Fill Column:70 ;; Fill Prefix: ;; END: